294 THE FOUNTAIN ?

she left him too long alone? "But you are always here," he
answered. "You are the lakes and their quietness; you are
the sun and its warmth; you are the spring, and the
summer that's coming. You are my last throw, my Julie
on the table of this world. The past and the future are
included in it."

"Your last throw? Why do you say that?"

"But for you, I should play no more."

"You mean you would die? But why should you-----"

"No, my dear, Fm not trying to frighten you with the
heroics of suicide," he said, "though suicide is a journey
like another which reasonable men are entitled to make,
I mean only that to all else but you I am already dead-
er shall be when I am fully master of myself. I know that,
except in you, the world can give me nothing comparable
with what I have lost, and a world that has nothing to give
has nothing to take away. I am a German and a landowner.
After this war, my land may still be mine and hold its
value—perhaps the only thing that will hold its value.
But the greater part of my wealth not in land will vanish
if we are beaten. If I die, there will be nothing for you; the
land will stay in my family; there will be nothing else.
And if I live—the whole tradition is gone, or so I believe.
In generations, we may build it up again. The Prussian
ideal will prevail at last because it is necessary to civiliza-
tion. But meanwhile------" He moved his hand towards

her. "I shall see nothing of it. Only greed and indiscipline
and selfishness and the throttling of the best by the many
that is called democracy. Why should I share in it or have
arty part in it? I believe in nothing but that it will some day
be superseded, when the world has learned at last what
Prussia tried to enforce too soon. I would work and fight
against it if I had my strength and my friends were living,
but I have none and they are dead. But you are alive,
Julie, and in you, perhaps, my children and their children."
"Who are to be revenged on England?" she said.
"To be revenged? O Julie, I have made nothing clear.
It is not of England or France or Germany I am thinking,
Not of this war or another; they are all put away from me.